Silence is Golden

Silence is Golden

Copyright 2007 by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

 

“Tis better to remain silent and appear a fool, than to speak and remove

all doubt.” –Unknown

 

We are told in several places in the Old and New Testaments that

remaining quiet is often the better alternative to speaking. The wise

are often portrayed as persons of few words and fools as those who do

not know when to stop talking. Despite the apparent clarity of

Scriptural teaching on the need to listen more than speak, we denizens

of the Twenty-First Century Church do not seem to get it. In our

media-saturated “talking-head” society every one seems to want to

make themselves be heard as often as possible. Perhaps it is connected

with the “15 minutes of fame” idea. The more we talk the more chance

we have to get our egos gratified in the public square. As in so very

many other of today’s crumbling personal disciplines Christians are

often indistinguishable from their secular counterparts when it comes

to using their mouth more than their ears. (Before I come across as

insufferably judgmental let me state for the record that the author is

terrible at keeping his mouth shut. I have somewhat improved in this

area in recent years, but the fact remains that I love to hear the sound

of my own voice. Call it “Vocal Narcissism”).

 

As the old folk proverb says, “we have two ears and only one mouth, so

we should listen twice as much as we speak”. It is probably safe to say

that the proportion suggested here has been pretty effectively reversed

in contemporary culture. In fact the two to one speaking/listening

ratio is probably too conservative to describe many of us.

 

Beyond that it sometimes seems as if the person who actually does

hold their tongue for a time during polite conversation is not doing it

to listen so much as to think about what they are going to say next.

Truly attentive listening is a lost art. This is spiritually dangerous for

two reasons. The first is the aforementioned narcissism, also known as

ungodly self-centeredness. The second is the fact that children of God

are supposed to hang on every word that comes from His mouth in

order to live a life pleasing to Him. This is hard to do when we will not

let Him get a word in edgewise!

 

Prayer, for instance, was always intended by God to be two-way

communication. Our relationship with our Lord will be stunted if we

speak our prayers without ever pausing to hear His reply. It is only in

the quiet which comes when we finally learn to shut-up that we begin

to hear that “still, small voice’ the Bible tells us is often God’s preferred

means of contact with us. God will not shout to be heard over our

verbal torrents and until we come to grips with that fact we will miss

out on hearing from the One Person it is most needful for us to listen

to.

 

I do not have any easy answer for this trend towards Christian

verbosity. It is tempting to suggest that we need to take a page from

the Desert Fathers of the early church and go to some remote place for

a good long while where we could be by ourselves. With no audience

within 25 miles maybe we would lean to appreciate the quiet and make

it our own habit to be quiet ourselves. But the world we live in today

does not make that particularly easy to do. The vast majority of us

cannot take a three-month sabbatical from human company. We have

to find another way.

 

Perhaps the answer is to carve out shorter times of solitude each day as

a way to practice quietness. Or we might do the unthinkable and

actually ask our friends and family whether we talk too much and too

foolishly. If they are honest with us we might just be shocked enough

by their answer to consider the wisdom of silence. The revelation that

our feet are regularly spending time in our mouths may actually be

enough to make us keep those mouths safely closed.